Wedding Night

It may be the weather, it may be work, and it may be the kids. There are any number of reasons a woman needs outrageous fiction to take her away (because, honey, Calgon is not going to cut it). It’s a matter of personal preference, of course, but from the moment I picked up my first Sophie Kinsella novel she became my tried and true, light, frothy-but-with-a-tiny-message-and-things-always-works-out-in-the-end friend. The Shopaholic books and their heroine, Becky Bloomwood, made me laugh out loud with her use of letters between Becky and her creditors. Kinsella has moved on from Becky (not forever, I hope) but continues to fashion women who are always goodhearted but usually a little out of touch with reality. They are women with no filter between their brains and their lips and it makes for fun reading.

In her latest, Wedding Night, it is Lottie who has come up with the brilliant idea of marrying her boyfriend from fifteen years ago after ending a relationship that hadn’t netted an engagement ring. Even better, she’s decided that sex mucks everything up and that she and her new fiancé won’t do it until they are married. This is not quite as noble or sacrificial as it sounds as they decide to get married in a week. Enter Lottie’s older sister Fliss, the one who’s always been around to pick up the pieces of Lottie’s ideas when they explode on impact. If anyone can sour Lottie on marriage it is Fliss, as she’s going through one of those not-to-be-believed divorce battles, while trying to hold onto a high pressure executive job in the hotel industry. The good news is that she’s not alone in her desire to stop this marriage before it starts. Ben (the groom-to-be) has inherited a family empire and his right-hand man, Lorcan, needs him to buckle down and make some tough decisions, not run off to City Hall and then Greece for a honeymoon.

When Fliss fails to stop the marriage, she convinces Lottie to wait until the honeymoon to consummate things. At this point, the antics of the four characters create events that slip ever more widely out of control while stretching the boundaries of credibility. If credibility is a dealbreaker for you, then don’t read Wedding Night. If laughing out loud and escaping into a world of decadence, riotous silly fun, and a happy ending are what you want, then Kinsella delivers. There is nothing to interpret or decipher about Wedding Night, there is no heavy work to be done. Kinsella’s imaginative prose is so strong that it provides a mental massage for weary-of-reality readers. It doesn’t hold the secret of life or the encrypted numbers of the next Powerball but you won’t care because with a deep sigh your mind will relax and release. And really, much of the time, isn’t that what you want?